Should the USN and USMC now concentrate on the C?
Having seen the article about the USMC planning to spend significant money on updating and life extending F18s from the boneyard, so that the squadrons on CVNs have something to fly, I was confused about the reference to the F35B in the press release.
As I understand it the legacy Hornets have been very heavily used and are requiring a lot of costly maintenance.
If the F35C's IOC and hence FOC is focussed on more than that for the F35B then the USN /USMC can replace their legacy F18s with F35Cs and transition to two fixed wing fast jets on a carrier sooner.
The F35B as far as I know has never been planned to regularly operate off a CVN and an F18 has never operated off an LHD.
The issue with the F-35B is that they were already supposed to be flying operational missions, taking some/much of the strain off the Hornet fleet. With the delays to the F-35, the Hornets are now having to fly excess hours that they were never intended to fly, meaning that their airframe lives will run out much earlier than had been originally planned. Hence the need for 30 'new' airfames from the boneyard.